


Predictive

by FireEye



Category: Final Fantasy I
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Temporal perception can be a funny, funny thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Predictive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stealth_Noodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealth_Noodle/gifts).



> Prompt: FFI - Arylon. AKA the nameless dancer in Cornelia who offers hints. I want to know how she knows. Psychic powers? Extensive surveillance network? Is she secretly stalking the Light Warriors and keeping better track of information than they are? Is she some kind of supernatural being trying to make sure these knuckleheads actually manage to save the world? Let your imagination run wild and free!

At first, it’s merely a sense of déjà vu.  Sky blue eyes and a gentle kiss on the back of her hand.  The exasperated scoff, the smack of a bare hand on leather armor, the glint of a smile as the adventurer turns the corner from the square, and the whorl of her skirt as she laughs into the fountain.

The dancer is no stranger to flirtation, after all.

They’re going to rescue the princess.

It’s no secret.  Adventurers do what adventurers will do.  But her reflection flickers with the ripples on the water.

_They’re going to rescue the princess._

This is somehow different.

_They_ are _going to_ rescue the princess.

 

The spell passes, and Arylon passes it off as well wishing.  So many have gone north, so few have yet returned, and most not at all.

~*~

It is only when they invariably return – victorious at that – that the doors crack open.  _Audibly, in the middle of the night, no less, startling her from her bed._   The memories that follow are nothing but a trickle at first, superimposed upon her daily life.  A moment’s warning before stubbing her toe.  An echo in a conversation.  Nothing _changes_ , not at first.

It is not until later that she remembers that her father once wanted to sell her to a witch or a scholar’s tower, for predicting the crops and the weather, while the white mage who tends the garden of the Temple of Twelve Moons only shrugs and tells her to see a sage... or the Council of Magi.

~*~

_And then the deluge_.

Somehow, the would-be warriors of prophecy were at the center of it all.  The eye of the storm was fixed on them, and in that calm, _everything is clear_.  She knows where they are going, because they have gone before _and before and before and before_....

At first she is drawn to their conversation because she overhears the red mage _speaking_ , but the red mage _hasn’t spoken yet,_ and when she repeats what she heard, the four of them stare at her as one.  As though she has two heads.  She excuses herself forthwith, but even as they argue amongst themselves, they will return to her again.

_go east, go south, go west, go north._

One, and it would be the one that kissed her hand once, who doesn’t remember _how many times_ , who _doubts_ , asks her how she knows.  And the frustrating part is that she doesn’t, she doesn’t know _anything_ but what she sees, and what she sees is the world rushing towards the brink, she sees _time_ twisted in a maelstrom that comes around _and around and around_ , yet is ever falling deeper into the center to drain into a vast, dark nothing.

An end that not even she can see.

When they’ve gone, _east and south and west and north and into the vortex itself_ , she dances until collapse, night after day, day after night, until her muscles ache and she falls into bed exhausted and breathless, if she makes it to bed.

Until the end of the world, Arylon the dancer, dances to _forget_.

**Author's Note:**

> ...or she's a spy for Queen Jane looking after castle interests. I'm easy. :D


End file.
